Micro Management
Head chefs are a different breed
‘Oh yeah that’s right, Quent, give it some welly’. My name is Tim, and I’m not really sure what giving it some welly means in this context, as I’m buttering toast, and the butter is pretty hard. Giving it some welly would only serve to make holes in the toast. Also, I’m on my lunch break. The toast is for me, not for a customer, and so his presence here is neither necessary or welcome. There appears to be a sexual element in Chef Dougie’s tone. Aggression, tinged with arousal. He repeats ‘Yeah give that wee piece of bread some welly.’ He smells of onions and whiskey. Both aged. The smell emanates mainly from his mouth and/or the stains in his chef whites. I’m curious as to what exactly he wants from me so I press the butter harder into the toast, creating a massive hole in the middle. I look at him, forgetting to correct his mistake regarding my name and say ‘Could you, maybe, show me…’
Dougie laughs in my face.
Usually he’s keen to muscle in and show me how things are done. He would forcefully grab at whatever tool you were using and barge you to the side. Usually it’s preceded with some kind of offensive comment like ‘You English, always pussyfooting around it.’ He would switch out ‘English’ to suit the person in question, whether they be gay, Arabic, or female. It was as if the only people on planet earth ‘worth their salt’ were middle aged white Scotsmen.
What’s strange is not his insistence that I was doing something wrong. It was mainly that no one called Quent ever worked here and the fact he was just staring at me and not forcing me aside.
I stopped spreading the butter and looked at him. At this point all I wanted to do was go and sit on the back stairs with my toast and the one free glass of post mix coke that we were allowed per twelve hour shift.
That’s when he grabbed the toast and threw it in the bin.
‘Now Quent. Let’s try that again shall we?’ Dougie sniffed, rolled up his sleeves, stared directly into my eyes, then nodded towards the loaf of bread.
So I picked up the bread knife and sliced two pieces off the crusty loaf, careful to cut them straight and uniformly.
We’d definitely gone past the point of no return regarding his misuse of my name.
‘Now… Toaster.’
He gave this instruction as if he were training an animal. As if i didn’t fucking know that the next step was to put the bread into the toaster.
Biting my tongue, I picked up the two pieces of bread.
‘Ah Ah Ah, now, what have you forgotten to check?’
At this point I began weighing up the pros and cons of telling him that Middle aged Scottish men were perhaps one of the worst demographics, then punching him in his useless aggressive face. In the time I spent considering this he said, ‘Have you checked it’s plugged in?’
It was obviously plugged in as I had just used it but I made a point of exaggeratedly checking it was plugged in. To my surprise it had been unplugged. Dougie had obviously unplugged it. What was happening here? What kind of lesson was he trying to teach me? To check that your head chef hasn’t sabotaged you at every possible juncture in the preparation process?
I picked it up to plug it back in.
‘Now you want to plug it in and push that switch to the on position.’
‘Yes Chef.’
‘Do I detect a hint of sarcasm, or is that how all you English cunts speak?’ His wide grin belied the aggression in his voice. I recalled a time when I was a child and me and the girl next door had eaten all of the chocolates out of an advent calendar. Her stepdad sat us both down later that evening and our ‘punishment’ had been to eat loads of chocolate bars. I’d never been so confused, and this feeling came about as close.
‘Right, if you can’t follow instructions you’ll need this. It’s written in Scottish but I’m sure you’ll work it out.’ He handed me a piece of paper. At the top it said ‘How to make two pieces of toast’. So far so good in understanding the Scottish. The list then consisted of:
Slice two pieces of bread from loaf. Unless bread is already sliced, in which case you wont need to slice it. If you desire one piece of toast, follow the same instruction but substitute 2 slices for 1.
Make sure toaster is plugged in. You could do this before slicing the bread, but you then run the risk of someone unplugging it when you aren’t looking so probably best to do second.
Push the toast down into the toaster so as to change its state from bread to our desired result, toast.
When the toast pops up, you then want to liberally apply butter. It is imperative however that you ‘GIVE IT SOME FUCKING WELLY’.
He tapped his finger excitedly at instruction four. ‘You see that Quent? Rule 4!’ Suddenly these instructions had been labeled as rules, taking this interaction to a whole other level of odd. I’d recently applied to move up to Sous Chef and now I was being given a lecture in toast making.
With the bread now in the toaster I began to heat the knife up over the gas hob. I should have done this the first time and I could have spread the butter evenly and without issue. In fact this whole scenario could have been avoided.
‘Where in these rules does it say mince about by the hob for a bit? Always mincing, you English. Probably why we destroyed you in the Civil War.’ Maybe this was how the Scottish had beaten the English in that war. Bamboozled them into submission with red herrings and facial expressions which contradicted their words.
‘I’m just heating up the knife because the butter is too hard.’
‘Hmm, seems to me you should have thought about that before you decided to make yourself some lovely toast.’
He was actually right. I should have got the butter out of the fridge way ahead of time. I really could have given it as much welly as was necessary then. But also. This knife trick would do just fine. And his method of making me learn such a lesson was mental.
I looked around the kitchen for Dipesh. I hoped that Dipesh was doing something wrong. Not giving enough welly to seasoning pork or having the audacity to be Indian. Anything his ancestors had indirectly done to Dougie’s ancestors. Anything that would make Dougie just fuck off and leave me alone to my toast. But Dipesh was forcefully beating a steak with a rolling pin whilst humming the Scottish national anthem. There was no chance. Fucking teacher’s pet.
I walked back over to my section and ran the hot knife through the butter. It curled up into a lovely golden swirl which I immediately transferred over to the toast. Sensing the tension I looked up at Dougie, His almost non existent lips were stretched wide across his face as though being forced open with invisible fish hooks. He bared his teeth. In animals, baring your teeth was a sign of aggression. In chefs this was also true. They were their own kind of animal in a way. His cold grey eyes were fixated on me.
I made a conscious effort to cover every possible part of the toast with butter. My mouth watered for it. If anything, this whole ordeal had led me to be much more appreciative of the food. I certainly wouldn’t be making the same mistake again regarding the hardened butter. Maybe this really backward style of management has some kind of twisted logic.
With the toast finally buttered to perfection I looked back at Dougie.
‘Thank you chef. I’m just going for my break now.’
I picked up the plate
‘Good job chef.’ Said Dougie.
‘Thanks Chef.’
‘Just one more thing before you go Quent. It was a good effort but you really didnt give it any fucking welly.’
He hit the plate out of my hand. It crashed to the ground.
‘Now. Two slices of toast.’